BRIGHT BULB SCREENINGS, Free Double Features Every Second Thursday of the Month
Follow Bright Bulb Screenings on Facebook, Instagram
Follow Bright Bulb Screenings on Facebook, Instagram
TOM WAITS DOUBLE-FEATURE!
CANDY MOUNTAIN (1987, directed by Robert Frank & Rudy Wurlitzer, 103 minutes, Canada)
BIG TIME (1988, directed by Chris Blum, 90 minutes, U.S., 90 minutes, U.S.)
- - - - -
A modest oddball gem of the 1980s, CANDY MOUNTAIN brings together two legendary talents and the fantastic collection of their musician friends for a shaggy dog road movie that takes us from NYC to the placid vistas of Nova Scotia.
CANDY MOUNTAIN (1987, directed by Robert Frank & Rudy Wurlitzer, 103 minutes, Canada)
BIG TIME (1988, directed by Chris Blum, 90 minutes, U.S., 90 minutes, U.S.)
- - - - -
A modest oddball gem of the 1980s, CANDY MOUNTAIN brings together two legendary talents and the fantastic collection of their musician friends for a shaggy dog road movie that takes us from NYC to the placid vistas of Nova Scotia.
Julian (Kevin J. O'Connor on THERE WILL BE BLOOD) is a young guitarist who convinces his rock star employer (The New York Dolls' David Johansen) that he can track down the elusive guitar maker Elmore Silk (Harris Yulin) whose hand-crafted instruments are now worth a fortune. On the road, bad luck rears its head and Julian is thrown into all sorts of situations involving eccentric characters played by Dr. John, Joe Strummer, Arto Lindsey, Leon Redbone, Mary Margaret O'Hara and an advice-offering, piano-playing Tom Waits.
Robert Frank was the influential photographer whose 1958 book THE AMERICANS captured the Beat Generation and became a cultural touchstone. Frank would feature Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg and Gregory Corso in his in the classic 1959 short PULL MY DAISY and later direct the infamous Rolling Stones tour documentary COCKSUCKER BLUES. Rudy Wurlitzer is the eccentric screenwriter behind the existential '70s cult classics TWO LANE BLACKTOP and Peckinpah's PAT GARRETT & BILLY THE KID. If you know these men's work, you'll know that CANDY MOUNTAIN is not so much interested in the final destination as in capturing the accidental beauty and absurdism of the trip itself.
- - - - -
Tom Waits kicked off his career as a broken-voiced Beat-influenced crooner of poetic rhapsodies about the hard knock life, but by the mid-1980s, things took a weird turn. The melancholy 1970s singer-songwriter conventions dropped away to reveal a deranged carnival barker, howling over the racket of a junkyard band.
- - - - -
Tom Waits kicked off his career as a broken-voiced Beat-influenced crooner of poetic rhapsodies about the hard knock life, but by the mid-1980s, things took a weird turn. The melancholy 1970s singer-songwriter conventions dropped away to reveal a deranged carnival barker, howling over the racket of a junkyard band.
And while the LPs SWORDFISHTROMBONES (1983), RAIN DOGS (1985) and FRANK'S WILD YEARS (1987) were challenging for many of Waits' old fans, the concert film produced around their songs was anything but your basic concert film.
Between the songs, Waits is seen selling watches, playing cards and taking a bath, ostensibly as Frank, living his “Wild Years.” Director Chris Blum's background was in Art Direction and his conception is bold, conjuring a garish and grotesque atmosphere with Waits often delivering his tunes in ultra close-up. The film never found its audience upon release, perhaps a case of a cult artist audaciously splitting his own cult in two, but modern audiences have caught up with Waits' strange persona and as he performs so irregularly, BIG TIME presents a rare chance to throw yourself into his musical universe.
Filmed at San Francisco’s Warfield Theater and the Wiltern Theater in Los Angeles with a band featuring the late reed player Ralph Carney and guitarist Marc Ribot, Waits performs favorites from the era including “Time” “Clap Hands” “Hang On St. Christopher “ and “Innocent When You Dream.”
(BIG TIME's screening will be sourced from a VHS copy)
- - - - -
(BIG TIME's screening will be sourced from a VHS copy)
- - - - -
Follow Bright Bulb Screenings on Facebook, Instagram
Admission is FREE